St. Joseph’s Health Centre

We consulted with hospital clinical staff, the architect and best practices documentation in the field of Mental Health design in order to provide tamper-proof and anti-ligature versions of M&E devices and services in all patient rooms.

Our project scope was the complete redevelopment of the existing Mental Health Emergency Services Unit. This involved upgrading and modernizing the unit in order to support eight patient rooms, (the previous unit had only three patient rooms).

New, energy-efficient LED lighting fixtures, complete with dimming controls, replaced the old, inefficient fluorescent lighting fixtures. Remote patient room controls, located at the Nurses’ Station, allow clinical staff to control the electrical receptacle in each patient’s room, the smart glass on the room’s door/window, as well as the room’s lighting fixture, including remote-controlled dimming. A modern real-time locating system was also provided; it includes patient tracking, staff duress and patient wandering functionality. Note: This project was honoured with a 2020 Toronto IES Illumination Section Award

More than 30 IP-based security cameras were installed, including two cameras in each patient room. These are viewable from computers at the Nurses’ Station.

One of the challenges of the project was that the hospital did not have a viable existing IT room to house all the new voice/data infrastructure. As a result, we had to design a new IT room on the floor below the renovation area to support the new unit and future Emergency Department redevelopment. This was done during construction; therefore, the design and coordination were fast-tracked and subsequently completed successfully.

Also, remote patient room controls were not well defined throughout the design process. During construction, we had to quickly coordinate with several vendors, each with a proprietary system, in order to provide a solution that the contractor could execute.